From the End of the First Century Or at the Beginning of the Second Century A

Commentaries on Mark

INTRODUCTION

From the end of the first century or at the beginning of the second century A.D., there are texts affirming that the second Gospel is the work of Mark: he accompanied Peter to Rome, where he also met Paul, and faithfully put in writing the teaching of Peter.

Like the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, that of Mark is based on the oral traditions concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which by degrees were written down. These partial texts that were passed on from community to community were completed by the oral witness of those who had accompanied Jesus during his earthly life. Mark wrote his Gospel for a definite type of community: he addresses Christians of pagan origin and wishes to proclaim the mystery of Jesus, Son of God, by relating the words and deeds by which he revealed himself to humankind.

Differing from Matthew and Luke who prefaced their Gospel with two chapters dealing with the childhood of Jesus, and differing also from John who placed at the beginning of his Gospel an admirable prologue, Mark holds to the pattern of primitive catechetics. The Acts of the Apostles in fact tell us what was the beginning and the end of this preaching by the Church of Jerusalem: at the time when Peter was looking for a replacement of Judas he said, “See among those who have been disciples with us from the moment Jesus was baptized by John to the day he was taken up” (Acts 1:21-22).

•1.1In verses 1 to 13, Mark gives us in three small tableaux three important insights about Jesus’ salvation. Vv. 1-7. John the Baptist announces the coming of the One sent by God: this Jesus about whom the Gospel will speak to us has been announced, prepared by all the great witnesses of the Old Testament. In him and by him God’s salvation will be accomplished.

Vv. 9-10. Jesus goes down into the Jordan to open the gates of the true Promised Land (see the Book of Joshua): he is the beloved Son of the Father on whom the Spirit rests. Jesus comes to reveal the mystery of God, the mystery of the love of God – Father, Son and Spirit.

Vv. 11-13. Jesus is at peace with the wild animals as he is with the angels. In him and by him will be accomplished the reconciliation of all creation with its God. Such had to be the Messiah announced by Isaiah (Is 11).

•14.After this desert experience, Jesus returns to his home province, Galilee, and establishes himself in Capernaum. Jesus lives in the house of Simon, who already appears to be the leader of a group of fishermen, and among them Jesus finds his disciples.

God becomes human, Jesus shares the life of the people of his time, and like the prophets he teaches by what he says and does.

The time has come (v. 15). What does that mean? The time fixed by God has come to an end (Gal 4:4; Eph 1:10), the time of preparation has ended, and the manifestation of God announced by the prophets has already begun.

Change your ways and believe the Good News. God does not expect works on the part of human beings but calls them to faith. Be rid of all that hampers you, of all that prevents you from seeing and believe! Believe that it is he, and he alone who is able to save you!

At once they left their nets and followed him (v. 18), which means leaving their family and work they began to live with him. Like the masters of religion in his time, like the rabbis, Jesus instructed his first disciples, teaching them what they were to pass on to others in the Church.

Simon, Andrew, James and John. Jesus already knew them: he had met them where John the Baptist was preaching (Jn 1:35). The first nucleus of disciples is this natural group of lake fishermen of which Peter seemed to be the leader. They were most probably young men, ready to make a commitment at a time and in a culture where people were freer than we are from the constraints of work.

They did not yet know what the Reign of God would mean but they trusted Jesus to guide them. This for them was the beginning of faith.

•21.Mark has shown us how Jesus began his public life: he became part of a movement of conversion that had shaken everyone at the call of John the Baptist. It was then that Jesus began preaching and met his first disciples.

Mark will now give us a “day” in the life of Jesus. Through his words and actions a power that impresses every witness becomes manifest. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus preaches in the synagogues. The synagogue is the Jewish house of prayer. People gather each Saturday for the chanting of the Psalms and the reading of the Bible. The one in charge preaches and invites others to join. This is where Jesus reveals himself. He is not like the teachers of the Law who repeat, interpret, and give others’ opinions. Jesus speaks on his own and he speaks with authority, “In truth, I tell you.”

•23.With the same authority Jesus drives out demons. This act also contains a message: Jesus delivers us from the influence of the Devil, who strives to destroy those created in the likeness of God.

This “Master of this world” (Jn 14:30) is present in all human business and culture to deceive human purposes and converts any progress into new slavery.

In Jesus’ time, but much more rarely in the Church’s time (our time), there were some persons possessed by the Devil. Jesus freed quite a number of people from this slavery and disease. Physical possession is not the usual way of the devil’s activity in humans. The Devil operates (far more dangerously because we do not feel it) in the moral life of people. He blinds and confuses them with regard to the truth, disguised as the angel of light (2 Cor 11:14).

Not that the Devil is the cause of every sin and evil that people do. There is also the selfishness of our “flesh” and the lure of the false promises of “the world” but the Devil, as enemy of God’s kingdom, is never at rest. He always nurtures our temptations. With holier persons who are not easy to tempt in a direct way, he goes about deceiving them persuading them to give more importance to their own good purposes than to the advice of others and the teaching of the Church.

The Devil notices at once those who are capable of weakening or destroying his empire. Then he awakens the bad, the mediocre, the foolish and the ill fated against them. That is why wherever Jesus goes the Devil also appears.

•29.Peter’s simple faith is manifested. Jesus enters the house, bringing with him peace and health. Jesus shows us how to visit the sick. What a natural thing to do when Mass ends – to go see the sick. The care and love of our Christian sisters and brothers attracts God’s favors upon them.

As soon as it was sundown. Let us not forget that it is the Sabbath, the weekly day of rest. For the Jews days are counted from the time of sunset and night precedes day as shown in Genesis 1:5. Everyone observes the Sabbath, just as Jesus does and there is such haste to bring the sick to him that they begin to do so in the evening as soon as the Sabbath is over.

•35.The apostles knew God since childhood through the Bible’s teachings; perhaps they had not discovered God within their own lives but prayed to God as to a distant stranger. When they joined Jesus, they immediately understood that there was something extraordinary about him. They were especially taken with his apparent intimacy with God. The most extraordinary thing they noted in his manner and actions was his intimate and faithful union with his Father.

Living with Jesus, they begin to desire to know the Father more fully, something like Jesus knows him (Lk 11:1; Jn 14:8; 15:15).

THE MARGINALIZED

•40.Jesus leaves Capernaum to announce the Good News to the most isolated and ignored families in the whole country. There he finds the lepers. At that time leprosy was considered as a contagious disease. Because of this, lepers had to live on the outskirts of the towns, far from the rest of the population. There was also a belief that leprosy was an affliction from God, and the Jewish religion declared lepers unclean.

By Jesus’ act, the flesh of the leper becomes clean. As a result of this, from that time on, he would be like others and people would no longer avoid him. Both people and the Law of God would acknowledge his dignity.

The Good News does not remain mere words but it effects a change. From then on, they would no longer be marginalized people.

Don’t tell anyone (v. 44). Very often, particularly in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus gives this order to those who have just been cured of an evil (1:25; 1:34; 1:44; 3:12; 5:43; 7:36; 8:26; 8:30). We must note, however, that Jesus does not give this order when he is outside Israel territory; and that the order is not given after the transfiguration.

Jesus imposed this silence during the first part of his public life because most of the people expected a warlike and vengeful Messiah. Jesus did not want any ambiguity about his mission. Only when Jesus had sufficiently distanced himself from this popular image of the Messiah, would he begin to reveal, first to his disciples, the mystery of his person.

For this same reason Mark, who differs from Matthew, rarely uses the expression “son of God.” Mark reserves it for the privileged moments of Jesus’ revelation to people: his baptism and transfiguration, and at the conclusion of the passion on the lips of the centurion.

•2.1With this miracle on the paralytic cured and forgiven, Jesus gives three answers at the same time: to the sick man, to his friends and to the Pharisees.

When Jesus saw the faith of these people (v. 5). These are the friends of the paralytic, and Jesus rewards their faith.

Apparently the paralytic did nothing more than consent to their advice. At once, Jesus tells him – your sins are forgiven. What a strange thing to say! How can Jesus forgive sins if the man is not conscious of any fault and, at the same time, repentant and awaiting forgiveness? Certainly during his long infirmity, this man had asked himself why God was punishing him (the people of his time believed sickness was a punishment from God). Many texts of the Old Testament emphasize the complex connection between sin and illness. It is often illness that makes us conscious of our state of sinfulness, and for his part Jesus does not want to heal unless there is reconciliation with God.

Jesus acts like God: he looked at the sinner, rectified the complexes of culpability and pardoned before healing.

Later the Pharisees arrive. When Jesus forgave the paralytic, the simple people did not realize how scandalous his words were. They did not have enough religious formation to realize immediately that only God could give absolution. It was the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who were scandalized. Their indignation is justified because neither they, nor the others, nor the disciples, yet understand that Jesus is the true Son of God. Jesus silences them: If I restore health in the same way God does, should not I also forgive in the way God does?

Jesus disconcerts those who ask who he is. Better still, he shows that only he can save the whole person, body and soul.

FORGIVENESS OF SINS

Happy this man who was assured of his pardon through the glance and the words of Jesus! God is he who lives and loves and we need to meet him so that forgiveness can be authentic – his eyes meeting our eyes. Because of this, God had to become human – Jesus forgives sins because he is a son of man (Jn 5:27) and from him we receive the pardon both of God and of people within the Christian community.

PUBLICANS

•13.To enter the family of God, we must change some of our values. This conversion is not as conspicuous as participation in devotional practices but is much more valuable. First, we must liberate ourselves from prejudices by which we classify people. Let us stop dividing people into good or bad; those we can greet and those we cannot; those we can love and help and those we cannot. Let us learn that God does not hate the rich or the uneducated, those on the left or those on the right, for God’s merciful plan sees to the salvation of all.

The Gospel speaks about the publicans or the tax collectors (v. 15), who served the foreign powers. Jesus’ nation was under the domination of the Roman Empire, and the tax collectors were Jews who worked for foreigners.

Patriots considered them traitors. The people knew they filled their pockets; even beggars refused to receive from the publicans. Yet Jesus did not condemn them but chose one of them, Levi, as one of his apostles, of whom the majority were committed patriots.

The teachers of the Law were like catechists or religion teachers. They were well versed in religion and admired Jesus’ teachings, but they did not consider as brothers and sisters the publicans and other sinners (that is to say people who did not fulfill the religious precepts).

Levi is probably the apostle Matthew (Mt9:9). In this case, like Simon, named Peter by Jesus, Levi would have been given the name of Matthew; in Hebrew Mattai means gift of God.

•18.Many religious leaders sympathized with Jesus. How they would have liked that he rekindle the faith of the nation! Jesus himself did not feel that his primary task was to reorganize worship and bring people to the synagogues.

The Pharisees were fasting. Fasting, a sign of repentance, supported their prayers that God come and liberate his people. God comes in the person of Jesus: joy and celebration are more appropriate than fasting. The prophets had announced the wedding feast of God with his people when he would come to visit us (Is 62:4-5). Because of this, in presenting himself as the bridegroom, Jesus identifies who he really is.

What is the new wine? (v. 22)It is of course the Gospel, and the enthusiasm because of the Holy Spirit that leads the disciples to every kind of madness to manifest the love of the Father and the freedom that they have acquired. In order to understand this, let us read the Acts of the Apostles and the lives of the saints, who have marked Church history.

Old skins: Gospel does not fit into the molds of religion and likewise does not enter into those persons who hold onto them at all costs. Mark wants us to catch Gospel’s novelty. We have just seen Jesus welcoming sinners, now we wonder that he doesn’t come like religious groups with prayers and fasting.

•23.It was normal that passersby, when hungry, would pick fruit or wheat. The Pharisees were scandalized because Jesus’ disciples did this on the Sabbath, a day when all work was prohibited.

The Sabbath was made for man. No law, no matter how holy it is, should be applied in a way that would oppress a person.

The Son of Man is master even of the Sabbath (v. 28). For the Jews, the observance of the Sabbath was the pillar of the Law established by God. Who did Jesus think he was?

•3.1HUMAN ADVANCEMENT AND THE SABBATH

Here, what Mark wants to emphasize is not the miracle Jesus performs, but his attitude vis-à-vis the Sabbath. This miracle confirms what he has just said in 2:28.

The Pharisees considered it lawful to work on the Sabbath if it was a question of saving someone in danger of death. Jesus is about to enlarge this ruling: for him, not to do good is to do evil, not to cure is to kill.

Some ask if Jesus was interested in the material advancement (well-being) of people or only in their spiritual progress. Actually, it is impossible to separate one from the other.

Jesus, apparently, did not speak of the economy nor the social order, but he did denounce our prejudices that prevent us from giving the world a true and just order.

People, then, have the capacity and the means to better their condition, but they use them poorly because they remain prisoners of principles or institutions that are considered sacred, and in order to preserve them they allow half the world to die.

•13.THE TWELVE

It was on the mountain that Moses and Elijah met God: it was there that God gave them their mission (Ex 19; 1 K 19). It is on the mountain that Jesus calls those who will be in a special way associated with his own mission: they will be with him, they will proclaim the Word and drive out demons.